of from those provinces
which were in the possession of Christian sovereigns. We have seen how
carefully in the peace which James I concluded with Spain everything
was avoided which could have interrupted this commerce. James
confirmed this company by a charter which was not limited to any
particular time. And in the very first contracts which this company
concluded with the great Mogul, Jehangir, they had the right bestowed
on them of fortifying the principal factories which were made over to
them. The native powers regarded the English as their allies against
the Spaniards and Portuguese.

In the year 1612 Shirley, a former friend of Essex, who had been
induced by the Earl himself to go to the East, and who had there
formed a close alliance with Shah Abbas, returned to England, where he
appeared wearing a turban and accompanied by a Persian wife. He
entrusted the child of this marriage to the guardianship of the Queen,
when he again set off for Persia, in order to open up the commerce of
England in the Persian Gulf.

But it was a still more important matter that the attempts which had
been made under the Queen to set foot permanently on the other
hemisphere could now be brought to a successful issue under King
James. It may perhaps be affirmed that, so long as the countries were
at open war, these attempts could not have been made, unless Spain had
first been completely conquered. England could not resume her old
designs until a peace had been concluded, which, if it did not
expressly allow new settlements, yet did not expressly forbid them,
but rather perhaps tacitly reserved the right of forming them. Under
the impulse which the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot gave, I will not
say to war, but certainly to continued opposition to Spain, the King
bestowed on the companies formed for that purpose the charters on
which the colonisation of North America was founded. The settlement of
Virginia was again undertaken, and, although in constant danger of
destruction from the opposition of warlike natives and the dissensions
of its founders, yet at last by the union of strict law and personal
energy it was quickened into life, and kindled the jealousy of the
Spaniards. They feared especially that it would throw obstacles in the
way of the homeward and outward voyages of their fleets.[363] Their
hands, however, were tied by the peace: and we learn that when they
made overtures for the marriage of the Prince of Wales with a Sp